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US F&W Service Proposal May End Polar Bear Hunting

(posted January 02, 2007)

Polar bear imports to the US could come to an end if the US Fish & Wildlife Service's current proposal to list polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act is finalized next December. If you are hunting polar bear in 2007 or have a trophy still in Canada, make sure you have it imported into the US before December 27, 2007, which is when the proposed listing would go into effect. If you have a hunt booked for after that date, check with your outfitter now as you may not be able to import the trophy.

While US Fish & Wildlife's proposal, issued on December 27, 2006, would not necessarily end polar bear hunts under the Endangered Species Act, the Service has said that "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act means "depleted" under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which would trigger a ban on imports under that act. We have that from Conservation Force's John J. Jackson, III, who reviewed the proposal and says the Service clearly states they would classify all polar bear populations as "depleted," requiring the automatic and complete shutdown of trophy imports.

Of course Jackson intends to fight the proposal and get the Service to recognize distinct populations of bears that cannot be considered depleted by any scientific data. The public has 90 days from January 11, 2007 to submit comments on the proposal. Jackson has requested vital documents that were not included in the proposal issued by the Service but which Jackson says are important to the Service's findings that the polar bear is indeed threatened or depleted. Those documents include population assessments and peer review comments and contributions by "independent" experts.

Once Jackson has reviewed the additional documents, he says Conservation Force will develop and submit its own comments countering factual errors and biased assessments that contributed to the proposal. In some cases, Jackson will be repackaging information previously submitted and ignored by the Service, only this time he will include the raw scientific data that the Service cannot ignore. A complete analysis of the proposal and what it will take to stop it will be the subject of the February 2007 issue of Conservation Force, which will become available late this month.

A primary factor for the Service's proposal is the threat to the polar bear's habitat caused by receding sea ice. The Service used scientific models it says predict the impact of the loss of ice on all polar bear populations over the next 45 years. You can read about those scientific models in the Service's proposal yourself by clicking below. As soon as the population assessments and peer review comments become available, we will post them to our web site as well under Web Updates. - Barbara Crown, Editor.

Click here forNews Release issued by the US Department of the Interior on the Proposal to List Polar Bear As Threatened.

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